Sun Announces Services to Accompany Midrange Servers

Sun Microsystems Tuesday announced a variety of new services designed to help customers attain the highest levels of system availability and investment protection possible for its new UltraSPARC III processor based Sun Fire servers.

Sun Microsystems Tuesday announced a variety of new services designed to help customers attain the highest levels of system availability and investment protection possible for its new UltraSPARC III processor based Sun Fire servers.

"We're helping customers design, implement, and operate the network architectures which can handle the unpredictable nature of the exponential growth and opportunity of the Internet," said Paul Musson, vice president of marketing, Enterprise Services in a prepared statement.

"Our services are geared up to help customers take advantage of the new Sun Fire servers for massive scalability, availability and agility to capitalize on The Net Effect," Musson added.

Sun is offering two services to help customers implement the new Sun Fire Servers. The Sun Fire Application Readiness Service provides enterprises with implementation and project management services to help implement and configure smoothly a new Sun Fire System installation. The Sun Fire Data Center Readiness Service is designed to help integrate the Sun Fire server into an environment in the most effective way possible so as to provide a robust operational environment for mission-critical applications. The Data Center Readiness Service is expected to be available some time during the second half of 2001.

New training Services for midframe servers that Sun will also offer include: IT workforce development solutions to help enterprises design the linkage between business goals, the IT services being delivered, and the work being performed; a complete suite of courses on the Solaris 8 operating environment; and job-role-based professional certification programs for system and network administrators.

Sun will also be offering several proactive services.

Sun's RAS Profile Service is for enterprises with midframe servers that need high availability. It is a pre-emptive service that aims to increase mission-critical system availability and reduce unplanned outages through comprehensive reliability, availability, and serviceability analysis. This service is available on Sun Fire servers running Sun Cluster 3.0 and other Sun Enterprise Servers.

Sun will also offer pre-emptive, on-demand, self-help tools through its Online Service Center. System configuration checks provide detailed status reports on the Solaris operating environment, patches, and hardware conditions, while Sun Patch Check compares system patches against current and recommended revisions and allows for automated patch downloads.

Later this month, enterpises will also be able to take advantage of a full portfolio of proactive services, including the Sun Remote Services Net Connect which will help with installation, change management, and system planning.